Date: 19/02/2018 20:11:36
From: Bubblecar
ID: 1190255
Subject: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

Get a good look at Jupiter’s Great Red Spot while you can. The giant storm as we know it today is shrinking, and it might fade into memory within your lifetime.

NASA’s $1 billion Juno probe took stunning photos of the Great Red Spot in July 2017 — the closest images we’ve ever gotten of the giant tempest. Scientists were floored by the level of detail beamed back by the spacecraft.

….But Orton said the Great Red Spot, and other long-lived storms on Jupiter, still won’t go on forever.

“In truth, the GRS has been shrinking for a long time,” he said.

In the late 1800s, the storm was perhaps as wide as 30 degrees longitude, Orton said. That works out to more than 35,000 miles — four times the diameter of Earth. When the nuclear-powered spacecraft Voyager 2 flew by Jupiter in 1979, however, the storm had shrunk to a bit more twice the width of our own planet.

“Now it’s something like 13 degrees wide in longitude and only 1.3 times the size of the Earth,” he said. “Nothing lasts forever.”

A signature storm on planet Neptune is also vanishing, ongoing Hubble telescope observations show. That storm is as large as a continent on Earth, but may disappear in a few years, according to Space.com.

The remaining lifetime of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter isn’t much better.

“The GRS will in a decade or two become the GRC (Great Red Circle),” Orton said. “Maybe sometime after that the GRM” — the Great Red Memory.

Report

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Date: 19/02/2018 20:14:09
From: party_pants
ID: 1190256
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

it’s had a good innings.

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Date: 19/02/2018 20:47:02
From: mollwollfumble
ID: 1190268
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

party_pants said:


it’s had a good innings.

A couple of decades ago it had changed colour, and people thought that was a sign that the end was coming. But if I interpret what I’ve seen correctly, it’s changed back to its original colour.

Predicting the fate of the great red spot is harder than predicting the path of a cyclone because we don’t know what’s underneath.

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Date: 20/02/2018 11:55:11
From: Cymek
ID: 1190349
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

shakes fist

Damn you Clearasil, leave this red spot alone

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Date: 20/02/2018 17:02:45
From: dv
ID: 1190524
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

Damn

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Date: 20/02/2018 17:04:13
From: party_pants
ID: 1190525
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

dv said:


Damn

on your “bucket list” was it?

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Date: 20/02/2018 17:04:48
From: Cymek
ID: 1190526
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

I wonder how long it has existed, perhaps at some point in the past it covered most of Jupiter and has been shrinking for thousands of years

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Date: 20/02/2018 17:06:31
From: Witty Rejoinder
ID: 1190531
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

Cymek said:


I wonder how long it has existed, perhaps at some point in the past it covered most of Jupiter and has been shrinking for thousands of years

IIRC Galileo didn’t mention it when he first observed Jupiter through the newly invented telescope.

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Date: 20/02/2018 17:12:36
From: party_pants
ID: 1190533
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

Witty Rejoinder said:


Cymek said:

I wonder how long it has existed, perhaps at some point in the past it covered most of Jupiter and has been shrinking for thousands of years

IIRC Galileo didn’t mention it when he first observed Jupiter through the newly invented telescope.

I have a better telescope than what old mate Galileo had, 10 inch reflector. It is not really powerful enough to make out Juitper’s red spot. It is fine for seeing the 4 major moons.

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Date: 20/02/2018 17:19:48
From: furious
ID: 1190538
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

How far away was Jupiter at the time the photo was taken?

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Date: 20/02/2018 17:28:33
From: party_pants
ID: 1190542
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

furious said:

  • I have a better telescope than what old mate Galileo had, 10 inch reflector. It is not really powerful enough to make out Juitper’s red spot. It is fine for seeing the 4 major moons.

How far away was Jupiter at the time the photo was taken?

Dunno. Somewhere in between the asteroid belt and the orbit of Saturn :p

if you want look it up, Windows tells me the pitcure was taken on 29.12.2013.
The location was Earth, southern hemisphere.

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Date: 20/02/2018 17:38:54
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 1190543
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

party_pants said:


furious said:
  • I have a better telescope than what old mate Galileo had, 10 inch reflector. It is not really powerful enough to make out Juitper’s red spot. It is fine for seeing the 4 major moons.

How far away was Jupiter at the time the photo was taken?

Dunno. Somewhere in between the asteroid belt and the orbit of Saturn :p

if you want look it up, Windows tells me the pitcure was taken on 29.12.2013.
The location was Earth, southern hemisphere.

http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/jupiter-2011-14.htm

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Date: 22/02/2018 16:11:33
From: mollwollfumble
ID: 1191386
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

party_pants said:


Witty Rejoinder said:

Cymek said:

I wonder how long it has existed, perhaps at some point in the past it covered most of Jupiter and has been shrinking for thousands of years

IIRC Galileo didn’t mention it when he first observed Jupiter through the newly invented telescope.

I have a better telescope than what old mate Galileo had, 10 inch reflector. It is not really powerful enough to make out Juitper’s red spot. It is fine for seeing the 4 major moons.


Well noted. “the present spot was first seen only after 1830 and well-studied only after a prominent apparition in 1879. “

That’s quite recent in astronomical terms. Kepler died in 1630. So it wasn’t even seen by Herschel with his 1.26 metre diameter telescope (1789 to 1815). Doesn’t that strongly suggest that it didn’t exist back then?

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Date: 22/02/2018 16:15:05
From: Cymek
ID: 1191388
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

mollwollfumble said:


party_pants said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

IIRC Galileo didn’t mention it when he first observed Jupiter through the newly invented telescope.

I have a better telescope than what old mate Galileo had, 10 inch reflector. It is not really powerful enough to make out Juitper’s red spot. It is fine for seeing the 4 major moons.


Well noted. “the present spot was first seen only after 1830 and well-studied only after a prominent apparition in 1879. “

That’s quite recent in astronomical terms. Kepler died in 1630. So it wasn’t even seen by Herschel with his 1.26 metre diameter telescope (1789 to 1815). Doesn’t that strongly suggest that it didn’t exist back then?

Could be, perhaps its cyclical over centuries and it’s now in the shrinking phase

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Date: 25/02/2018 02:29:00
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 1192560
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter

Aphelion 816.62 million km (5.4588 AU)

Perihelion 740.52 million km (4.9501 AU)

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Date: 25/02/2018 02:38:30
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 1192562
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

Ephemeris Calculator

https://theskylive.com/jupiter-info

https://theskylive.com/planetarium?obj=jupiter&date=2013-12-29&h=15&m=33

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Date: 25/02/2018 08:27:04
From: mollwollfumble
ID: 1192570
Subject: re: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has only a couple decades left - NASA

Tau.Neutrino said:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter

Aphelion 816.62 million km (5.4588 AU)

Perihelion 740.52 million km (4.9501 AU)

How do you calculate the eccentricity from that?

Think I have it.
e=f/a
Where f = aphelion – perihelion
And a = aphelion + perihelion

Is that correct? Yes, that’s right.

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